I saw this quote on this sweet ladies's blog today.  It resonates with my thoughts lately - on everything.  If you have to tell people you are, you probably aren't.

Being powerful is like being a lady, if you have to tell people you are, you aren't.   

- Margaret Thatcher

And if you ask me, she was quite a lot of both. ;)
[And how did I NOT KNOW she died 2 months ago?!]

“The perfect woman, you see [is] a working-woman; not an idler; not a fine lady; 

but one who [uses] her hands and her head and her heart for the good of others.” 

— Thomas Hardy

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the

courage to continue that counts.” 

― Winston Churchill

Never underestimate those who are loyal to you though. It’s easy to grow complacent, dependent on this loyalty. To forget the root of it as a shared vision and instead as a potted plant… something that is just there when you expect it to be. Understanding loyalty, and those who give it to you, is core to building amazing things from it. Taking it for granted burns the loyalty away and generally creates lifelong enemies in the process. 
- Kayfabe 

This isn't me.  But I know this person.  And I think they are (all) funny.

(I really like her^ )

"For such a quiet girl, who walked to school every day across soft fields, her red hair as wild as blowing leaves - to love without fear would be to drown in another person."

- Simon Van Booy, Everything Beautiful Began After

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"Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. 

Not courting talk - real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious."

-Kerouac, On the Road

From Southern Nomad. 

I love this! And I love that she entitled it "Risk". 

"Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast." 

-W. Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet, 2.3 

. 

Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold. 

— Zelda Fitzgerald

. 

I wonder how many people I have looked at all my life and never seen. 

— John Steinbeck, East Of Eden

. 

Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I’m one of them.
— Ray Bradbury

This really is the year for making things happen.  I think you've all heard the growing (and growing) frustration in me in regards to watching life happen.  Well, I'm pretty certain that frustration is there to drive us to actually change.  So this past weekend, I did something I've been wanting to do for years.  And Tuesday I had lunch at Melrose Market, where a month or two ago I said, "I should have lunch there someday."  And yesterday, I went into that little shop in the Olympic Hotel.  The one I've walked by countless times and always figured I'd stop in, one day.  I know this is all poorly put, but my point is simple:  do the thing you've been meaning to do, hoping to do, dreaming to do... because while you feel you might combust if you never do it, you'll more likely die.  Slowly, quietly, you'll just sink into it. 

So, while it was good to wait, to pray, to prepare.... don't wait too long... and my bet is, you already have.

Caution always sounds like wisdom.  But sometimes it's the wisdom of the slowly dead and dying.

CARPE DIEM.



We die daily. Happy those who daily come to life as well. ~George MacDonald

I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument, while the song I came to sing remains unsung. ~Tagore

We cannot waste time. We can only waste ourselves. ~George M. Adams

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. ~Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read and all the friends I want to see. ~John Burroughs

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. ~Fr. Alfred D'Souza

You belong to me, I have made you mine. I can’t believe that there was ever a woman in a fairy tale fought for harder and more desperately than I have fought for you within myself, from the beginning, and always anew, and perhaps forever.
— Franz Kafka, Diaries: 1917

Dang.  

.

"Education is not filling a pail but the lighting of a fire"
- W. B. Yeats

"I am convinced that, until we have looked into darkness, we cannot know what a divine thing vision is."

-Hellen Keller